From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sat Aug 28 2004 - 19:52:08 BST
Scott and all MOQers:
Scott Roberts said previously:
Plotinus says that Intellect DOES guide everything, while Pirsig is saying
that it doesn't guide evolution.
dmb replied:
Again, you're confusing labels with contents. They share the same view
even if they use different words to describe it.
Scott then asked:
Then why did Plotinus call that first principle "nous"? Why did Franklin
Merrell-Wolff call his mystical experience "noetic"? ...Pirsig calls DQ
"pre-intellectual". Plotinus calls the first emanation from the One
Intellect. We have two different metaphysics here.
Scott quoted Plotinus for support:
"In a certain sense, no doubt, all lives are thoughts -- but qualified as
thought vegetative, thought sensitive, and thought psychic.
What, then, makes them thoughts?
The fact that they are Reason-Principles. Every life is some form of
thought, but of a dwindling clearness like the degrees of life itself. The
first and clearest Life and the first Intelligence are one Being. The First
Life, then is an Intellection and the next form of Life is the next
Intellection and the last form of Life is the last form of Intellection.
Thus every Life is of this order; it is an Intellection." [Enneads III.8.8,
translation by Stephen McKenna]
dmb answers:
I can see how a person can conclude that Pirsig and Plotinus are at odds,
but would again insist that this conclusion is based on a misreading of the
terms. As F.S.C. Northrop put it, "The philosophically important thing about
any common-sense term as it enters into any philosophical theory is not its
bare dictionary meaning, but the particular contextual meaning usually
unique to the philosophical system in question." And actually the quote
you've provided shows that Plotinus is using words like "thought" and
"intellect" in a way that is completely different from Pirsig. But notice
how Plotinus is saying there are different levels of thought, namely
vegetative, sensitive and psychic. In Pirsig's terms, he's talking about the
levels of static patterns, an evolutionary hierarchy, not just intellectual
patterns. Again, as Borchet puts it, "Plotinus did not have this terminolgy
at his disposal". But notice how Plotinus says "every life is some form of
thought." In Pirsigian terms, I think he's saying that each level of reality
is a form of consciousness so that even subatomic particales can express a
preference or a chair is a moral order. When we look through the terms as if
they were transparent and see the ideas they are meant to depict, we then
see that Pirsig and Plotinus share the same vision of reality.
Scott also said:
I think Borchert and Wilber, based on the quotes you gave, wish to make
Plotinus fit the modern ideas people have of mysticism, which are
unfortunately shared by Pirsig. They are, I think, trying to disassociate
mysticism from philosophy and theology,.. ...Now the modern mystical
interpreter wishes to re-endow nature with something God-like, which is
legitimate, but having forgotten, or misinterpreted the ancients (as I
think Borchert is doing -- notice the use of the phrase "creative Spirit"
and not "Intellect" or "Reason-Principle"), can think only of something
"undifferentiated" or "pre-intellectual" behind it all.
dmb replies:
Hmmm. Its not at all clear what you're trying to say here, but let me make a
few points about the modern, or rather post-modern, interpreters of
mysticism, particularly Pirsig and Wilber, who say essentially the same
thing. Both of them attack modernity's scientific materialism for the same
reasons, at least two of which are addressed and corrected by adopting and
integrating the perennial philosophy. As sketched out above, the first task
is to correct modernity's view that intellect is disconnected to the rest of
reality, that it was born without parents, as Pirsig puts it. The MOQ's
solution is to show that the intellectual levels has a "matter-of-fact
evolutionary relationship" with its parent and the rest of static reality.
This view already existed in the perennial philosophy and in all the world
great religions. This is where the levels come into it, in Plotinus, in
Wilber and in Pirsig. The other major problem with modernity's materialism,
which Pirsig call SOM and Wilber calls flatland, is that it denies the
validity of mystical experience as anything more than a merely subjective
hallucination. Both of them integrate the perennial philosophy's mysticism
by expanding the idea of empiricism and including the mystical experience as
a valid experience. Wilber's approach can even be called psychological and
is based on heaps and heaps of scientific data, and yet it recognizes the
validity of mysticism. And as I understand it, neither of them have done
anything to misinterpret the ancients, but are in fact correcting the
misinterpretations committed by scientific materialism, which has basically
thrown out the wisdom of the ages. Their idea was to rid the world of
irrational superstitions and such, and this is a very good thing in light of
the Inquistions and holy wars and such, but they created a spiritually
empty, soulless world in the process. Guys like Wilber and Pirsig are trying
to fix that in a way that does not revert to bible-babble or other social
level stuff.
I've gone on too long and yet barely scratched the surface. Anyway, are you
with me so far? In any case,...
Thanks,
dmb
Wilber:
"THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY is the worldview that has been embraced by the
vast majority of the world's greatest spiritual teachers, philosophers,
thinkers, and even scientists. Its called 'perennial' or 'universal' because
it shows up in virtually all cultures across the globe and across the ages.
And wherever we find it, it has essentially similar features, it is in
essential agreement the world over. We moderns, who can hardly agree on
anything, find this rather hard to believe."
Pirsig:
247 "Bradley's fundamental assertion is that the reality of the world is
intellectually unknowable, and that defines him as a mystic. ...Both he and
the MOQ are expressing what Aldous Huxley called "The Perennial Philosophy",
which is perennial, I believe, because it happens to be true."
Wilber:
"THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY (the term was made famous by Huxley but coined by
Leibniz) - the transcentental essence of the great religions - has as its
core the notion of 'nonduality', which means that reality is neither one nor
many, neither permanent nor dynamic, neither seperate nor unified, neither
pluralistic nor holistic. It is entirely and radically above and prior to
ANY form of conceptual elaboration.
Ken Wilber:
.........................................................."As Huston Smith,
Arthur Lovejoy, Ananda Coomaraswamy, and other scholars of these traditions
have pointed out, the core of the perennial philosophy is the view that
reality is composed of various LEVELS OF EXISTENCE - levels of being and
knowing - ranging from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit. Each senior
dimension transcends but includes its juniors, so that this is a conception
of wholes within wholes within wholes indefinitely, reaching from dirt to
divinity." (Emphasis is Wilber's)
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